Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell the difference.

Last week’s assertion here that California is crazier than Washington, D.C., brings this response from Horace E. Riley of Texas:

“How dare you insinuate that the nuts in California are larger than they are in Washington?! You may have more of them, but they pale in comparison to the present crop in Washington, D.C. I trust you will study the matter and change your position after you ruminate in the girls’ bathroom.”

I must remind Mr. Riley that California is the bellwether of all national insanity. Though craziness fetches up and concentrates in D. C., the nuttiness spreads from West to East. It is spawned in the psychosis factories of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento.

The letter writer’s reference to the girls’ bathroom likely stems from the new California law permitting public school students to use whichever campus lavatory they choose, according to their sexual self-identification and regardless of their external physiognomy. For the record, I’m keeping to the men’s room.

You lie! Now we know that South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was spot on when he hollered that accusation at President Obama. The chief executive was explaining the pending health-care reform bill and had just said it wouldn’t apply to illegal immigrants. It’s unclear if that reference or an earlier one prompted the congressman’s outburst.

Regardless, on an existential basis, he was on the mark. The prez is slippery, but he can’t dodge the fact he lied with his “If you like your health plan, you can keep it” mantra. For once, the “I was uninformed” defense just won’t wash.

Now comes evidence his labor department cooked the books to report an unemployment rate below 8 percent, just before the 2012 presidential election.

It doesn’t matter that the uninformed didn’t understand that the real rate, even with the manipulation, was up in the double digits. It was an effective lie.

The president’s approval rating has plunged since his anointing as “First Liar,” and a friend notes, “Who votes for Obama? Women. Specifically, single women. And what do women, specifically single women, hate more than anything else? Being lied to.”

Then he asks, “Is it too big a stretch to say that Barack has gone from being the best boyfriend ever to being just another guy who took advantage?”

It’s not a stretch at all. It sounds about right.

A budget surplus? California’s Legislative Analyst says the state government will finish in the black this fiscal year – by $2.4 billion. The trick now will be to keep the Democrat-dominated Legislature from simply spending it all.

Power ebbing: Why did Democrats in the U.S. Senate vote to change filibuster rules? They figure that after the elections in 2014, they no longer will have a majority in the upper house.

It’s the same logic that figured in passage of the Affordable Care Act. Democrats rammed through that abomination while they had majorities in both the House and Senate, calculating that after 2010 they would lose that advantage – a calculation that was borne out.

In 2015, Harry Reid will be joining Nancy Pelosi in the Minority Leaders’ Lounge.

Sanitized images: The Associated Press and the American Society of News Editors are urging their members not to use presidential images distributed by the White House.

The organizations are upset that news photographers have been barred from “private” yet official events, for which the administration provides its own pictures and video. No more of those photos of the president scratching his nose.

The important question: Could this mean the media are developing some backbone?

Nov. 22, 1963: Yes, I know exactly where I was on that date. I was in a long, deserted hallway in Dwinelle Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, waiting for a teaching assistant to open a classroom door.

A girl appeared at the far end of the hall, and as she approached she was weeping.

“President Kennedy has been shot,” she said. “They think he’s dead.”

When the instructor arrived, we walked down the hall and he opened the journalism classroom, where the teletype (remember those?) was ringing out the bulletin, “Kennedy dead.”

Have the 50 years provided perspective on that terrible day? There is no perspective on the assassination. It was a terrible act, an unforgivable act.

However, we have developed a perspective on the truncated presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

We know his failures were great, his accomplishments few – except in terms of tone and style.

We also know he was the last conservative Democrat. His “ask not what your country can do for you” has been transformed.

Now it’s, “Go ahead. Ask. We can make a deal.”

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